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Subject:RE: Documentation Process [long] From:david -dot- locke -at- amd -dot- com To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 17 Aug 2001 15:31:13 -0500
There are reasons why you hire TWs, and then there are reasons for not
hiring TWs, but TEs.
I work with a lot of writers who do not write. They manage the publication
process, they interface, they cya. They hate it. TEs should have been hired
to do the work.
I also work with programmers that write to spec. They don't know the
underlying discipline. They refuse to take responsibility for the user
experience. They see their little black box both in the code and in the
vendor organization. It never makes sense for programmers or QA people to
write the manual. I've worked for software tool companies. The biggest
mistake I see it programmers that think the programmers that use their tools
are just like them, the programmers who built the tools. This is totally
untrue. One company wrote a PowerBuilder framework. They used inheritance
lattices, because they were elegant. They were so elegant that the people
who had to build applications using that framework abandoned the framework.
They didn't want to invest the time it took to understand the framework.
If UIs are a reflection of the "Inmates Running the Asylum," then
programmers writing about the software rather than the UI is a reflection of
the "Inmates Writing their Own Prescriptions."
Programmers program. I've seen a vendor hire programmers for all positions
like sales and training. I watched that company die a quick death.
Programmers cannot do everything. As far as writing doc goes, they focus on
the wrong things most of the time.
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A landmark hotel, one of America's most beautiful cities, and
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IPCC 01, Oct. 24-27 in Santa Fe. http://ieeepcs.org/2001/
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